The Word Isn’t the Work

Last year I stood at my buddy’s kitchen counter, drinks out, game on, conversation drifting.

Someone mentioned an old friend’s dog and said it had mental retardation.

Everyone went quiet.

One of the husbands saw his wife look at him multiple times. Then he told us that at a golf tournament, at a prestigious course, he had signed a pledge never to say “retarded” again.

I laughed out loud.

I asked if they would prefer it if Eminem said it. Or South Park.

There was not much engagement after that.

Here is the thing: we do not say “retarded” anymore because pretty white women championed the cause. They wielded white male power and brought a word to its knees.

That is brilliant.

It is also ridiculous.

I was called the Red Weez growing up. Severe asthma. Weeks in hospital. Weak lungs. Red hair. Easy target.

The first car I had, I put REDWEEZ on the licence plate.

I have ADHD. C-PTSD. Significant mental health symptoms. Multiple head traumas. An undiscovered brain bleed that was never properly treated.

I am not writing this from outside the insult.

I am writing from inside it.

I am fucking retarded myself half the time.

And that is exactly why I am tired of the theatre.

We have to stop pretending moral seriousness begins and ends with word retirement.

Not saying a word does not automatically disarm it. Sometimes it gives the word more power. It turns language into a purity test instead of forcing us to ask how we actually treat people who are disabled, mentally ill, addicted, traumatized, poor, strange, slow, inconvenient, or hard to love.

Either teach your husbands and your kids not to use any words that humiliate and harm people, or stop dressing up at the country club and pretending one retired word is the moral hill society needed to die on.

The issue is not the word.

The issue is contempt.

And contempt has a thousand respectable vocabularies.